


the scars it left us

by Reshma



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, But it makes an impact, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hydra (Marvel), It's not necessary to read, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Canon Compliant, Other, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Physical violence against a minor, Precious Peter Parker, Protective Bucky Barnes, Russian Bucky Barnes, Soft Peter Parker, Superfamily, Temporary Character Death, To Kill a Mockingbird References, Underage Violence, spiderson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-04-07 20:20:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19092421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reshma/pseuds/Reshma
Summary: There is a day that still haunts Bucky long after recovery.





	the scars it left us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justanotherblond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherblond/gifts).
  * Inspired by [we leave through the fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17317439) by [justanotherblond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherblond/pseuds/justanotherblond). 
  * Inspired by [abscond](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18784150) by [justanotherblond](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherblond/pseuds/justanotherblond). 



> Warning: There is a short scene with mild depiction of violence towards a minor, temporary murder and resuscitation. There is no permanent death or injury.
> 
> *throws myself off a cliff*

**Inspired by the line, "No, Petya. She was no mother to me."**

 

There is a day that still haunts Bucky long after recovery.

 

He is lying next to Steve in his arms, Peter fast asleep in his bedroom with forest green walls and wall posters of космический корабль nonsense as Kukla's yawns send a buzz throughout their apartment.

 

It's warm and quiet. He can feel the tranquil rise and descent of Steve's broad chest and the nasally sounding snores that haven't changed since their time together before the war. Their fingers are laced together and Bucky is practically using his lover's stomach as feet warmers.

 

The clock on their nightstand glares the crimson numbers 3:27 A.M. and he can cars speeding nearby from their window, a dog howling and even a police siren in the distance. Queens is as restless as his mind is, wandering and efficacious. If he was still at the compound, he would not be pretending to sleep and instead get up and pace while trying to remember the holes in history and how he ever ended up in HYDRA's clutches. He would stare at Petya in disbelief or just grief, tuck him in tighter with his shitty, thin blanket and wish for him to just be safe. But unlike then, there is no anxiety or worry that could take him away from this; this is now and, in Rogers' arms and his baby boy secure in their new home, Bucky is whole.

 

There is still the smell of the lasagna that Rogers burnt _again_ and the echoes of their banter earlier that evening; Bucky reminded him not to swear in front of Peter as he proceeded to do just that. Petya's full hearted belly laugh that had followed, him clutching his stomach tightly on the sofa, face beet red and Kukla wagging her tail while nosing his knees. After his shift at the garage, he was in a foul mood but the red flush over his face and harsh words have been washed away by the domesticity of belonging.

 

It is a type of heaven and affinity in the truest sense and more than Bucky Barnes could have ever asked for.

 

Sitting in bed now feels pyrrhic, next to a man that's a war hero and has _saved_ him during D.C. It's a parallel to Buck's years of saving a scrawny kid never giving up in a fist fight.

 

He belongs, finally, to something other than someone's wars; to his son and to Rogers and Kukla. It's a family, married too and more than he ever dared to dream because dreams were for the free will nation; they were not meant for people dominated by HYDRA, the soulless black hole crushing every ounce of hope, joy and emotion he had left from his time out of cryo before Peter.

 

It is so different from the room with charcoal scribbles in English, the security box that crackled with static and the unfair life in the compound his boy was given.

 

He was used to seeing faces when he was out of the chair for too long in the room, images from a life that was not his at the time, the blonde man that was always too small and stubborn, bullets hailing down from the skies in fields or bunkers, a train going too fast in the snow somewhere in Europe, red, white and blue flags everywhere, and an американский skyline too flashy for his eyes.

 

It would usually be far too much to bare; he would scream, swear and beg for someone to kill him or promise to kill himself. It was a personal hell, living the flashbacks of someone else and feeling the full force of years of emotions he didn't understand; grief, pain, nostalgia and even love. It's like his mind was in a minefield and all it would take to stop was becoming the Asset.

 

Since S.H I.E.L.D. went down in Washington, he's embraced the flashes of his life in the 1940s. He's long accepted what he's done, the body count adhered to his name, the screams of innocent lives taken and the monster that he was forced to put on and off from underneath the bed scored by the eyes of HYDRA. But he has learned, though the tides are strong and current is rough, to ride the wave and savor the second chance he has been given as he crashes to shore.

 

But of all the forgiveness he's had to bring to his past and current self, he will never forgive himself for that one night.

 

It was just another day, late in the night he returned from a mission in Prague or Bucharest or some shit, grime still blackened on his fingerless gloves and body stained in dried blood, his mask discarded on the floor. He had killed fifty-two people at family celebration; straightforward mission with no witnesses and no evidence to track.

 

It's hard to remember details from it all; there's no certainty to his memories, what is true and what HYDRA had planted dance across a very thin line; and, yet, the easiest thing to remember is the faces of the lives taken.

 

The Asset had sat in the creaky wooden chair for an hour in the room before it happened. He was hollow, desolate and soulless.

 

He sat perfectly still, toes pointed forward in his combat boots and posture at a 90° angle, as he watched a boy mill around the concrete room.

 

Petya was only eight years old. One moment, he was eating dinner and the next, he was flipping through a novel cross legged on the dull ground, reciting the words precociously proud to his father, a man that did not exist in those moments.

 

All he could see in the flashes was the blood stains against the kitchen tile floors. He could only hear the hysterical pleas from husbands' to spare the lives of their innocent wives: he proceeded to strangle every last breath out of their miserable lungs, watch their frightened pupils dilate completely black and turn their bodies to a deathly chill.

 

The Asset was used to it, Bucky supposes: it's the children he wasn't ever able to forget when he came back from the mission. The feeling of dread and ants crawling underneath his skin: the urge to stop the futile screaming, whining and crying with a satisfying squelch to the skull; to see their tears cease halfway down their cheeks and flushed pink faces turn blue; and the instinct to discover how little force from his hand it took to crush windpipe or vital organ.

 

It disgusts him how much he craved it.

 

He could still taste the metallic gunpowder from the mission on his lips and the unignorable reek of lifeless bodies' decomposing flesh that never washed off. It was long after he entered the compound's incessant smog of rancid copper and grime that he could see the way he had paraded across the floors of dying women and a point where he had torn someone's chest open with a knife.

 

He didn't know many of their names but he knew their faces by heart; fear, terror and grief.

 

The air was full of sensed presence and static as he sat on a creaky wooden chair in the confines of their room; hard concrete, the box listening to them and the frigid cold of Siberia; he wasn't exactly watching himself from a different perspective but definitely not in his own body.

 

" _"Mr. Tate was right." Atticus disengaged himself and looked at me. "What do you mean?"_ " Petya read loud, exaggerating the American words. _"'Well, it’d be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird, wouldn’t it?'_ "

 

HYDRA would soon put him in the chair and everything would seem less than it did in that moment. How much more would be robbed from the pretend person he wasn't? They had taken all he had; a life that wasn't his, memories he didn't remember and emotions that didn't belong to his own heart.

 

"But what would you know about mockingbirds, Soldat? You’ll shoot them no matter how pretty they sing and go on to act as if sins were ever real." Peter's tone veered vitriolic, filled with a sort of hate and despair that didn't appear too often in the room.

 

Peter stared into the Asset's eyes to no response. With a sharp inhale, he squared his tense shoulders and looked down at his повесть vacantly. There was no family to comfort him and the outside world was not full of fairy tales he wanted to believe in.

 

A trickle of blood from a nick at the end of the Asset's gloves began to bleed. As the seconds passed, the color of red changed from a small drip of cherry to a pool of crimson thick liquid running of the edges of his fingernails.

 

How strange it was, to have a heart beat to signal he was alive, and yet, be dead in all other senses of the word.

 

Peter had continued to read on, despite it all, and his naive hopefulness peaked through, a testament to his age and how robbed he had been as well, the constant fight against the callous and cynical world. Petya was what reminded Bucky of what he wished the world was like; loving and forgiving while wise but staying innocent and youthful.

 

 _"An' they chased him ’n’ never could catch him ’cause they didn’t know what he looked like, an’ Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things. Atticus, he was real nice.'_ _His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking it around me. "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.’_ " There was a gradual softness, a rose colored curiosity, in his voice, though he read the novel dozens of times, and a high pitch of searching for answers as he looked up towards his father.

 

The Asset didn't acknowledge the unasked question. All there remained of the shell of the man he had been yesterday was apathy.

 

A moment passed in silence as the boy gazed for recollection, something, _anything,_ in the still man covered in blood held hostage by his own mind.

 

"I know they don't know you, not really." Petya's tone was too trusting and had turned to a whisper as his eyes began to water. "I see you and I know who you are; you're not a monster, you're my Papa.I wish you would come home." Peter had simply said, turning to face his father on the bed and leaning towards him.

 

Petya was austere as a HYDRA protege outside of the room but naive in the confines of concrete walls to think that monsters stay under the bed or skeletons inside of the closet.

 

Too much trust and love and fantasies seeping from the brown in his irises and his tears. It broke something inside him then and there.

 

It all collided into him like a freight train off the tracks headed speeding towards the edge of a cliff.

 

The blond man from his dreams, a key under a doormat, the chaotic hysteria of corpses littering the floor, the high pitched wailing, the blotchy faces and the urge to stop the boy from breathing _ever_ again _._

 

The Asset's instincts moved on their own accord, swiftly and without hesitation; one moment, he was as lifeless as the bodies he left in eastern Europe; and the next, he was snarling and choking the brat's neck raised several feet in the air against scuffed cement and spider cracks.

 

Pale fingers covered in gore against paler skin reddening and bruising across a child's throat. He drilled the boy's head into the wall with a satisfying smash as the pest thrashed against the grip while squirming viciously to stop the Asset.

 

His metal arm proceeded to pop each individual knuckle joint at the same time his eyes pierced the younger ones; his cruel gaze evinced an uncontrollable rage with a determined mission in mind.

 

"Soldat!" The boy wheezes and the Asset finds it funny as he forces more pressure on his neck. It's peculiar that the boy ever believed in the illusion of choice and control. There is no love and there is no use in sparing a mockingbird for their music.

 

"Papa! Pl- ease!" The gasp was breathless and tiny, scared and still all too wide-eyed as the tears stains halted and Petya's face turned an ugly shade of purple. His wiggling has stopped as the Assets slams his fist into the small form's stomach while the body has begun to slump forward.

 

His stories of free will not be enough to save him now.

 

'I- loo-o-" The kid coughed, guttural and disjointed, spitting out blood and eyes half-lidded, "loo-ve y-you."

 

So, the child would die in a few seconds and, perhaps, the havoc in his mind would finally seize.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


And that's exactly when it happened.

 

That's the first time Bucky Barnes forced his way out of HYDRA's brainwashing and the Asset's chokehold.

 

Maybe, it was fight-or-flight, maybe a complete fluke on being out of cryo for too long, but the only way Barnes has learned to even cope is the fact that the _Papa_ Peter begged for broke through.

 

It was like being electrocuted by lighting, electrifying, paralyzing and excruciating, as Bucky instantly retook over his body.

 

Within a whole second, the realization dawned on him of his present actions as he reeled back in shock and dropped Peter to the ground, throwing himself to the opposite side of the room.

 

Petya wasn't breathing as Bucky scrambled forward to perform compressions on his chest, yelling, "Fuck, fuck, FUCK!"

 

Two minutes later and nothing happened. He could hear the rushing footsteps of agents approaching their room drowned out by the silence of Peter's heart.

 

He could not die, God no, let it be Barnes not Peter, baby, spider, Petya, plea-

 

_Monsters do not stay under the bed, Soldat, and there is no place for you in this world but here._

 

If he was a monster for being a prolific killer, what was he for murdering his own child? He would rather die than this be true.

 

Bucky let out a blood curdling scream as he slammed him metal palm in agony to his baby's chest.

 

Abruptly, Peter heaved in air and wheezed for dear life, blinking into realization.

 

The look on his face is something Bucky will never be able to erase from his mind; the raw fear and the uncensored desperation from earlier were bad enough, but above everything, it was Peter's eyes when he was revived;

 

Full of trust and love, something _fucking_ proud.

 

"Papa?" A voice from the hallways squeaks of as the door inches open slowly. It snaps Bucky out of the nightmare replaying in his head; horrifyingly for once, Bucky wishes it was something made up that HYDRA forced into his mind.

 

"Petya, what are you still doing up?" He wants to be the scolding father his baby deserves but his shushed voice wobbles and his face is scrunched up upsetly.  

 

Peter tiptoes to the edge of the wooden frame as Bucky breathes out shakily and shoves Steve to the far end of his side of the bed. His snores stutter for a moment as he dislodges himself from Barnes' body and rolls over as the brunet sits up.

 

"Can I sleep with you tonight?" Peter may be fifteen but his loving smile, infectious blush and soft whispers will always be reminiscent of his inner child that was stolen; Bucky never stood a chance with his ringlets and freckles.

 

The weight from the bed sinks the mattress down and Bucky clasps an arm around Peter's back, shifting him between his fathers and tucked in with velvety soft blankets and a marshmallowy pillow beneath his head.

 

Peter scrunches his face at the look on Bucky's face; he's always the first to discern the difference between flashbacks of HYDRA's torture or missions and _that_ memory. He'd never be able to hide from Petya how much it still haunts him that

 

"Go to sleep, Petya." Bucky says and lies his head down.

 

Peter's eyelashes flutter in concern sleepily, "Are you okay, Papa?"

 

He tries to stifle a yawn but fails as Bucky brings his metal hand to his boy's cheek.

 

"Yes, my son. I couldn't be happier." He says simply.

 

As the teenager drifts off to sleep, he mumbles out, "I will always forgive you, Papa."

 

Petya was right; to kill a mockingbird is a sin. Petya is Bucky's mockingbird, the epitome of innocence, innate goodness and beauty. Barnes has murdered more songbirds than he'll ever fathom coming to terms with; but if he can preserve the one that matters most to him, that will have to be enough.

 

He will never forgive himself but it's not up to him and his haunting mind; Petya has no grudges and more room in his heart to absolve him than should be possible.

 

Bucky brushes Peter's hair off his forehead and snuggles down to his face; he presses a kiss and taps his nose to the top of his boy's head as Petya subconsciously burrows into his chest softly.

 

The room was no home and HYDRA was no family to him. That's a saudade only Petya and Steve and Kukla can fill.

 

So, perhaps he is an orphan; the Motherland was never his and that's okay; she was nothing of a mother to him.

 

He will be more than enough of a father to Petya.

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhh this took me so fucking long to write.  
> Fun things coming soon, I'm trying y'all.
> 
> To justanotherblond,  
> I love this series so much. There is so much depth and nuance to it all, I can't put it into words. There's too much I see in Peter and Bucky in myself. If you ever need a pick me up or a boost of confidence during those writer's block days (trust me, I know), you have a fan who feels so inspired, the smile on my face never stops while reading what you write despite the angst.  
> Also, you better square the fuck up if you don't give my superfamily a happy ending.  
> ♥️♥️♥️♥️
> 
> I need to go finish my other shit.  
> Laters,  
> \- Reshma


End file.
